By IANS,
Sydney : Two Australians have been confirmed dead in the Mumbai terror attack, as Australian consular officials in Mumbai were trying to contact 36 Australians known to be in the area at the time of the assault.
The Kevin Rudd government warned Australians to “expect the worst”.
The two Australians confirmed dead are Sydneysiders Doug Markell, 71, a former deputy mayor of Woollahra council in the city’s east, and timber merchant and father of two Brett Taylor, 49.
Australian High Commissioner John McCarthy said that seven Australians were rescued from the Oberoi Trident, including a New South Wales trade delegation led by Garrick Harvison.
Australian soap opera actress Brooke Satchwell and her film editor boyfriend David Gross were Friday on a flight to Singapore after a harrowing 36 hours in Mumbai.
Satchwell was at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel Wednesday night when gunshots and grenade attacks by militants turned the luxury hotel into a war zone.
The former star of the popular Australian soap opera “Neighbours” was in India for a three-week film shoot and had hid for up to an hour in a cupboard in a toilet on the ground floor before she was rescued by hotel staff.
“From what I know, yes [she is one of the few Australians to leave]… But I haven’t been told a lot. She was one of the few [to get out of the country] – I don’t know how that happened, I don’t know how they got out,” her agent Sarah Linsten was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press (AAP) news agency.
According to AAP, a spokesperson for Australia Asia Flight Training, which sent a delegate to Mumbai, confirmed their representative had not left his room since the attacks began Wednesday night IST and had no food or information from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
At least eight foreigners were amongst the 148 people killed in the brazen terror attack that targeted some of Mumbai’s best known landmarks.